History UsefulNotes / OtherAustralianTownsAndCities

True, 98% of the population is in the cities, but there are a fair few places of note. [[LampshadeHanging List your hometown and the last place you visited here]].

* ON that note there's the states second largest city, Geelong (which is a wholly separate city, as much as some would like to convince you otherwise). Best known for being between Melbourne the coast, having an oil refinery, having the states largest prison and being royally screwed over during the gold rush when false maps were printed showing Melbourne closer to the goldfields. Remind me again why Melbourne wants it?

** Please note that nobody can drive in Ballarat, and that our public transport consists of a handful of buses that go to their stops every twenty or so minutes.

* Adelaide, the city of churches- every second block is a church - due to the migration in early history of poeple of a lot of faiths. Every other one is used as a dumping ground for the mob... City has the reputation of being a single main street[[hottip:* :what do you mean? King William St or South Road]], the water is horrible (no thanks the upstream states, QLD, VIC & NSW), but the women look fantastic. Has the source of more than half the country's wine surrounding it.[[hottip:* :[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_region#Australia OtherWiki]] or[[http://www.southaustralia.com/WineRegions.aspx SouthAustralia.com]]]]. It is also said to be the serial murder capital of the world, and why not? Nothing much else happens there.
** And we throw great motor sports events (Pre 1995 Australian Grand Prix [F1], and the Adelaide 500 [V8 Supercars]. Melbourne [[strike: stole]] recieved the rights to host the Grand Prix in 1995; Adelaideans are still a little bit bitter about that, although some other Adelaideans point out that the bitterness is misdirected due to the fact that the Adelaide city council didn't even bother trying to keep the Grand Prix in the first place because they [[SmugSnake were so sure Adelaide would be picked again when the contract was up.]]

** Come down on Australia Day and see for yourself. [[ShamelessSelfPromoter And stay a while for the scenery, there's koalas and whales]].
* Coober Pedy, ''the'' archetypical Australian mining town. A common tourist stop on the way to Alice Springs, it's literally surrounded by slag piles, mine shafts (watch your step!) and machinery, and has mining-related attractions including an underground hotel (with swimming pool). A large producer of Australian opal (the rainbow kind), they've even found a plesiosaur skeleton made of opal. Seriously. did we mention that almost the entire towns population live underground?
* Snowtown, a small [[strike: town]] suburb north of Adelaide notorious for a serial killer hiding the bodies in barrels of acid in a bank vault.

** It is the biggest pearl mining (is that the right word?) - No, the word is pearling, place in Australia.

** That's not actually true. It's the only reason.

* Marble Bar, known for being so bloody hot that even the rest of Australia gapes in horror. It's known to get up to ''49.2 °C (121 °F)'' and got a world record of the longest consecutive days of maximum temperatures that went for ''160 days''.

* Brisbane, aka Brisvegas (Brisvegas = Berserk Button for people who live in Brisbane). Home of the Broncos, best rugby team in Oz and the Brisbane Lions, the greatest AFL team since the league was nationalised. The try-hard of the eastern capitals, attempting to match Melbourne and Sydney and failing everytime, or at least that's what those Southern Snobs like to think. Clearly it's so backward that the Mexicans (aka people from South of the Queensland/New South Wales border) keep coming here to live.
** Well, someone's got to civilise the place...
*** The irony is, Brisbane is called a glorified country town because it retains the friendliness and laid-back attitude that people in [[{{Yuppies}} Sydney]] and [[{{Hipsters}} Melbourne]] lost in the 80s and 90s... only to spend a lot of time lamenting that Australia has "lost it's identity".
*** It is perhaps more accurate to say southerners go there to die. Something about Queensland seems to attract old people.
** Hey, I like Brissie (pronounced Brizzy). Except the weather. ''Hate'' the weather.
* Toowoomba. Home of This Troper, and the state capital of drug use and homophobia. Whoo! The third largest inland city in Australia. And suggesting the use of recycled water... Reclaimed from [[spoiler: [[{{squick}} sewage]]]] for drinking water.
** The original writer of this entry, I can't let this stand. We NEED to do that, because our dams are at, oh, 8% capacity due to a 20 year long drought.
** I guess you guys have enough water now.

** It has a reputation for being 'Bogan Central' because it has historically been the site of Queensland's prisons and mental hospitals. They're still here, too.
*** Oi! The prison is in Oxley and that's part of ''Brisbane''.

* Caboolture. .. ... .... .... ... Well Keith Urban comes from here. Which lead to a NUMBER of people thinking the Urban Country Music festival was named for him (it wasn't). This troper is also proud of the fact that one of the local schools is the only State Run school with an original classroom still in use as a classroom since it's foundation 140 years ago.

* Weipa. You know those small towns in American programs that all band together to cover up a murder? Here's the LandDownUnder's one. Weipa is a mining town, a military base, and has crocs, sharks, snakes and spiders... and they all eat each other (I saw ''two'' shark corpses with croc teeth in them). And they sell guns at the corner shop. ''Lots'' of guns. Pretty much everyone who lives there is either military or mining and are rumoured to make a sport of shooting people in boats.
** The place is pretty nicely summarized in my father's own words when news spread of a murder in a Weipa publice bathroom: [[NightmareFuel "[The killer] Mustn't have been a local: if they had been]] ''the'' ''body'' ''would'' ''have'' ''never'' ''been'' ''found''." Gives a whole new meaning to the natives are restless.

* Interesting Fact: 'Canberra' means meeting place in an Aboriginal dialect. Not sure which though...there are heaps. I mean 'were, many are dead languages. (Stupid White Australia Policy)

* Nothing actually exists here. It's all just a prank two blokes are playing on the mainlanders. Seriously.
** Actually, there's this city called Hobart... and also a little place called Port Arthur, home to the single largest mass shooting with a single assailant in recorded history. The Yanks can't seem to beat us, no matter [[{{Columbine}} how hard they try]].
*** Which is not-unrelatedly the reason Australian gun laws are incredibly strict, and many kinda see Americans as [[{{Eagleland}} trigger-happy lunatics]].

* Christmas Island, [[AllThereInTheManual apparently]] the birthplace of SonicTheHedgehog. Currently used as a processing area (read: prison camp, at least during the Howard government) for refugees.
** The detention camps are in the process of being dismantled by the Rudd government, thank god.
*** ...aaaand [[BrokenAesop they're attempting to relocate them on foreign soil]]. Has gone down about as well as you can expect.

** Has the third-largest Greek population in the world, after Athens and Thessaloniki. Yes, that's right, the third-largest Greek population ''including Greek cities''.

* Albany - The other city in W.A. Lovely coastline, but freezing weather. Also the site of Australia's last whaling station, which closed in 1972 and is now open for tours.

* Kalgoorlie, largest open-pit gold mine in Australia. The real reason why the eastern states don't want the west to secede.

* Whittenoom, a small town in the middle of nowhere, famous (or infamous) for 3 things- a blue asbestos mine where almost all the workers caught asbestosis, a book about said mine called Blue Murder, and a song about said mine by the Oils called Blue Sky Mine.

** It is the biggest pearl mining (is that the right word? - No, the word is pearling) place in Australia.

* Broome, small town that's popular with tourists, due to its history and large numbers of crocs. Was once bombed by the Japanese in WW2.
** It is the biggest pearl mining (is that the right word?) place in Australia.

* Norfolk Island aka the part of the country that demands passports for locals from the mainland and if they could tell the rest of us to sod off they would. Oddly and totally unconnected to this is they it was founded by the Mutineers from the HMS Bounty.

* Brisbane, aka Brisvegas (Brisvegas = Berserk Button for people who live in Brisbane). Home of the Broncos, best rugby team in Oz and the Brisbane Lions, the greatest AFL team since the league was nationalised. The try-hard of the eastern capitals, attempting to match Melbourne and Sydney and failing everytime, or at least that's what those Southern Snobs like to think. Clearly it's so backward that the Mexicans (aka people from South of the Queensland/New South Wales border) keep coming here to live.

* Armidale (to the north of Tamworth), notable for having Australia's first regional University (The University of New England).

* Central Coast, a region consisting of a number of cities and suburbs just north of Sydney. Was officially counted as part of Sydney or Newcastle before 2005. Home of the pop punk group Short Stack.

* Interesting Fact: 'Canberra' means meeting place in an Aboriginal dialect. Not sure which though...there are heaps, and many are dead. (Stupid White Australia Policy*)
* Many Sydneysiders agree that Canberra, as a whole, is a hole. Most likely due to the fact it is dead boring, except for Questacon. Another possible reason why the capital is considered a whole by them, they are upset Sydney isn't the capital.

* Lord Howe Island, an absolutely beautiful, pristine island that's home to the world's southernmost Coral Reef, Kentia palms and the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Howe_Island_stick_insect world's rarest bug]]. Also has [[http://blog.mycology.cornell.edu/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Mycena_chlorophanos_MO-77351.jpg glow in the dark mushrooms]], [[RuleOfCool seriously].

** It was also a member of the USSR for three days when storms cut off communication with other capitols and local revolutionaries wrongly assumed that meant all the groups in other cites were moving. Three days later when contact was restored the state was given back. One assumes with some embarrassment.

** Victoria in general tries to have a sporting event going on every weekend, with most of these occuring in Melbourne, though some events are held elsewhere, such as Philip Island's hosting of the Grand Prix.
** Important suburbs that frequently appear in media: St Kilda (famous for the beach and music mecca Esplanade Hotel) and the separate city of Geelong, which will soon get absorbed into the Melbourne metro area.

* Toowoomba. Home of This Troper, and the state capital of drug use and homophobia. Whoo! The third largest inland city in Australia. And suggesting the use of recycled water... Reclaimed from [[spoiler: [[{{squick}} Sewerage]]]] for drinking water.

*** Redfern, known for high crime rates. Formerly home to the offices of several prominent gaming magazines. [[AndZoidberg And PCPowerPlay.]]

*** Redfern, known for high crime rates and the offices of several video game magazines. [[AndZoidberg And PCPowerPlay.]]

*** Redfern, known for high crime rates and the offices of several video game magazines.

* Adelaide, the city of churches- every second block is a church - due to the migration in early history of poeple of a lot of faiths. Every other one is used as a dumping ground for the mob... City has the reputation of being a single main street (what? King William St?), the water is horrible (no thanks the upstream states, QLD, VIC & NSW), but the women look fantastic. Has the source of more than half the country's wine surrounding it. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_region#Australia OtherWiki]] [[http://www.southaustralia.com/WineRegions.aspx SouthAustralia.com]]. It is also said to be the serial murder capital of the world, and why not? Nothing much else happens there.